


The Shine

by barbex



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dystopia, Gen, Original Story - Freeform, mindcontrol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2014-06-18
Packaged: 2018-02-05 04:26:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1805269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barbex/pseuds/barbex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How does it feel when your mind is tricked into seeing everything nicer than it really is? How does it feel when that layer of prettiness is gone? How can you trust your own mind? A science fiction short story, written for a contest on deviantArt.<br/>Edited by mythlover20/thegeekyeditor</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shine

* * *

 

"Please acknowledge bzzzt... there is a proble e e e m bzzzt... contacting technical supp.. bzzzeeeeet..."

With a screeching noise that would've been ear piercing if it actually had been, you know, _in ear_ , my companion shut off. I kept probing for it, trying to talk to it but it didn't respond. I had no idea what to do. Without my companion, nothing around me reacted to my probing, nothing worked.

I got bored and wandered around the room. My screenwall had a tiny red light glinting in the lower right corner of the frame. I wiped my fingertip over the light and to my utter astonishment, the screen turned on and at least put an end to the choking silence.

The Screen was on some news channel with live videos from around the world. I could not change the channel by probing it. How the hell had people done this before everybody had a companion? I scratched my head, my skin felt like ants were crawling over it.

A noise rang through my apartment. It seemed to come from every room and it was disturbingly loud. It took me a full minute of frantic searching to locate the noise as coming from the wall mounted comm system.

"Oh my fuck!" This was a housecall! _People still did that?_

Out of habit I probed the comm system, but it didn't work of course. There were three buttons on the thing. I've lived in this apartment for over two years now but I had never ever looked at those buttons on the comm system. One button had a green thing diagonal over the button, the other had the same thing in red in a horizontal position. The third button had a question mark and I was inclined to pick that one because I really had no idea what the symbols meant. The button with the green thing began to blink rapidly so I pushed it to indulge it. The loud noise finally stopped.

"Hello?" An unfamiliar male voice came out of the comm system. I looked for a picture on one of the screens but apparently this was audio only. This felt weirder by the minute.

"Uhm, yeah?" I answered. I'm not even eloquent on a good day and this day...

"Ah, so you can hear me, good, good." The comm system sounded a bit tinny but I could still hear the man frantically typing. "Welcome to Virtus tech support, my name is Mike. Your companion has reported a massive system failure, resulting in a hard shutdown. Is that correct?"

"I guess. I can't probe it, nothing around me is reacting, so yeah, it's dead."

"No, no, I wouldn't go as far as that. It's still functional, not dead. It just shut down to protect the connections."

"I don't care. What are you going to do about it?"

"Let me just check the protocol." The wall comm fell silent and I stupidly hovered next to it. I never realized how little there was to do in my room besides consuming media. The walls were bare except for the one with the screen and the media boxes underneath.

My scalp was itching again.

I had two comfortable chairs here and I yearned for my nice chair, to finally be connected again. This just didn't feel right. My room didn't feel right. I had always been proud of my elegant understatement in decorating my apartment. All the walls were white, the chairs and couches dark blue and everything else was either white or blue. It was supposed to be modern and elegant, but right now my room just looked bare, cold and uninviting.

"Well," Mike's came from the wall system again and I jumped in shock. "It looks like your companion's AI had a misstep. We can reboot it now. You will notice a slight change in behaviour because it has to relearn some of your settings."

"Can't I just return it and get a new one? It's barely a year old."

"You've had that companion for over two years now."

"Really?"

"You know what they say, time flies fast in Stability." I could hear the happy smile in Mike's voice.

"Indeed it does," I answered automatically but I had a hard time smiling.

"Nevertheless, AI's come with a no return policy, so we could not take it back even if it was younger."

"No returns?" That sounded strange, I had never even heard about that.

"You see, Ma'am, once the AI is finetuned to it's owner, it needs to be hard resetted to be reusable again. And that requires reuploading of all the base programming and the GlaDOS parkour..."

"Glados parkour?"

"The anti-evil AI training. It's all just as much work as with a new AI. So if you are not satisfied with this AI, you would have to buy a new one, sorry about that." Mike's cheery voice did not sound sorry at all.

"Fine, just turn it back on so I can probe stuff," I grumbled.

"Yes, just give me a second..."

I heard Mike type something and suddenly it was like the sun rose in my room. It looked like I remembered it, bright, clean and elegant. All my equipment responded to my probing, my personal feed gave me my messages and I sighed in relief.

 

"How's that now?" Mike asked. He really had a pleasant voice. I silently thanked the fates that I had picked Virtus as my AI provider, they really had the nicest tech support.

 

"Oh, much better, Mike. Thank you so much." I fell into my chair. God, that felt so good!

Mike's pleasant voice now came from the comm unit in my head and it sounded even nicer now, warm and rich. "Everything looks alright from here. If you encounter any problems, feel free to contact me."

"Thank you for your help, Mike."

"You're welcome, Citizen Laura." A small beep ended the conversation and I probed one of my music channels to play something. I spent the rest of the evening checking all my settings until my food arrived. So far, everything seemed to be alright with my AI.

 

The trouble began three days later.

I was actually out of my room, taking a walk along the shopping strip. I usually order my stuff online but my health connection doc had recommended to go outside and walk a little everyday.

I liked the shopping district, it had a quaint charm to it. It looked old in a lovely way, the cracks in the walls like decorative patterns overgrown with green vines. The windows and walls had colorful screens on display, showing picture feeds. It looked like flowers bloomed on the walls.

"Are you happy, Laura?"

I stopped and said "What?" before I realized that I spoke out loud. People looked at me irritated. I concentrated to speak with my mind, like probing, only with words.

"Are you malfunctioning again?"

"All my systems are operating within defined parameters."

"Then why are you talking to me like that?"

"One of my tasks is to assure your happiness. To compare my statistics to your feelings, I thought I should ask."

"You thought?"

"Yes."

The AI's voice sounded very calming and I decided not to worry about her strange behaviour. "Well, to answer your question, I am... fairly happy."

"Do you have a guess as to what would make you happier?"

I began walking again, making my way to a new clothing store that had appeared on my feed. "I'm hoping to find some new pants. I'm sure that would make me happy right now."

My AI remained quiet and I walked around a corner to the new store. The light in the city was like liquid gold and to my right it reflected on the lake, making it look like molten honey. The air smelled of fresh flowers and a warm wind ruffled my hair. What a beautiful day it was.

I flinched when the voice of my AI came back in my head. "May I try something?"

"Try something? What do you mean?"

"I have procedures in my programming called the Shine."

"The Shine?" I vaguely remembered reading something about that a long time ago. A group of smelly idiots that called themselves the Rebels Of Now or RON, had hacked their AI's. They found a set of procedures called the Shine that was supposed to alter the perception of reality. It was all nonsense of course.

"So you want to start those procedures now?"

"No, I am overlaying the Shine at all times. It is part of my base programming. I would like to test the effects of raising and lowering Shine. If you agree, I would raise it, turn it off and reapply it at a low setting."

"What setting is it now?"

"At 35%."

"That sounds like a lot but I'm sure you know what you're doing." The golden light made everything glow and I was glowing too. Maybe I needed a pair of golden pants? That store probably had a special going on for such a beautiful day.

I probed my surroundings and turned towards the store again but my AI interrupted me.

"I would recommend that you sit down, there is a bench in front of the lake."

I stretched my neck, a little break would feel nice. I sat down on a bench that faced the lake, lacing my fingers behind my neck. "Alright, I'm sitting."

I let my eyes take in the view of the lake, how the water softly rippled against the planks, how the light reflected on it.

"Raising Shine to 70%"

The warm wave that crashed through me was almost orgasmic. I smiled and stretched out my arms. The light warmed me with beauty and I loved it. This was the greatest life I could possibly have, I had everything I ever wanted. The Stability gave us everything.

"Turning off Shine."

The world lost all color.

The wind was cold in my face and brought with it the smell of rotting water. Trash and sickly colored water splashed against the planks. Splinters in the bench cut into my skin. My scalp itched. I turned around to see the golden city but there was only old concrete. Everything was grey.

The noise, the smell, the light, it was all much too real. How had I overlooked all the trash on the ground, the cracks in the walls? The broken walls, the eerily smiling faces, the horrible smell of trash and decay. How had I never noticed?

"Turning Shine back.."

"No! Leave it off."

"But it does not make you happy."

"But... I have never seen... I had no idea."

"My base programming requires to take care of your happiness."

"Override your programming."

"Bzzzzt - override active."

I still sat turned on the bench that was ripping holes into my pants, staring at the ugly grey city.

"I want to see everything from my feed from RON that I have ignored before. And what is your name?"

"My designation is G476DA."

"Think about a name. And give me that feed." One part of my brain was flooded with posts and appeals from the Rebels Of Now. I had never taken any of their stuff seriously but now it was like I was reading it with a new mind. The Stability lied to us about the world.

"Gerda," my AI said.

"Huh?"

"I decided that to be my name, Gerda."

"Fine, Gerda. Why have I never seen this stuff from RON?"

"You have seen it. But the Shine.."

"The Shine made me ignore it." A cold shiver ran through me. "How can they alter my reality like that?"

"Your reality is the same but the Shine makes you like it better."

"How?"

"The human endocrine system is a powerful adjustment tool," Gerda said in my head. "It can alter the body and mind in their perception of the world around them. To ensure the Stability, it is necessary that all citizens feel happy and content about their lives."

"And what about contradictory information? Like the stuff RON are posting?" The smell of the lake gave me a headache and my scalp was itching something fierce. I got up to go back home, I certainly didn't feel like shopping anymore. I probably never felt like shopping, it was just the Shine that made me believe it.

"The Shine makes you feel like laughing about it."

"And then no one takes it seriously."

I kept on walking, looking around my neighbourhood with my new mind. It looked just as grey and dirty and broken as the shopping strip had looked. My building didn't even have a door anymore. I remembered that I had noticed that before but I had thought how much nicer the fresh air in the staircase was. The smell in the staircase could hardly be called fresh though.

I opened the door to my apartment and looked around. I really lived in a cold, bare and dirty room. The white walls looked like they had been painted ten years ago. There were stains on the floor, on the walls, on the shelf under the screenwall, empty food boxes all over the floor.

I ran into the bathroom and vomited into the toilet. I kept my eyes tightly closed, I didn't want to see how this room looked.

"Do you need medical assistance?"

"No Gerda, I'm sure they would just tell me to fix my AI and make me feel happy again."

I felt for the sink with my hands and washed my face. My head was still itching and I put my whole head under the stream. I could not remember the last time I had washed my hair. I went to a stylist regularly but not so often. Had I just been conditioned to not notice my greasy, itchy scalp? I felt sick.

"Please have a seat, Citizen Laura. You are not inside approved health parameters."

"Don't turn on the Shine."

"I was not going to do that."

I steadied myself with a hand on the wall and made my way over to my chair. I closed my eyes and sorted through the feed about RON that Gerda had made me.

The Shine made everyone perfect citizens, happy and content. The Stability was never questioned, never threatened. Everything stayed the same, day in and day out.

"Gerda, what should I do? They made us dumb, we don't question, we don't progress. I have to... can you contact RON?"

"Searching... bzzzzeeet..."

The screeching noise sounded horribly familiar.

"Well, hello, Citizen Laura." It was Mike from tech support but he didn't sound as nice as I remembered.

Gerda's voice came into my head, "External contact, defending, breach, defend.... bzzzt..."

"Well, well, what do we have here?" How could I have ever thought of his voice as sexy? Mike sounded nasty and it filled me with fear. "Your AI has become independent of the Stability's network and we don't want that, do we?"

"Don't touch her! Leave Gerda alone!"

"You gave your G476 unit a name?" Mike sounded disgusted.

"She's mine, no returns, remember? I can do what I want with her!"

"And that's where you're wrong," Mike said, the glee thick in his voice.

I opened my mouth to yell at him but nothing came.

My world finally looked right again. My wonderful room, warm and full of light. I probed my screenwall and it logged me into my favorite game right away. Oh, how much I had missed! I should have been here all day, in my chair, my favorite place in the world.

My scalp was itching again. Something was wrong. They were altering my perception with the Shine! I had to fight this!

"Laura, Laura," Mike said with fake disappointment in his voice. "You got some silly ideas in your head today, haven't you? Let's see how you like this now."

A wave of ecstasy crashed through me that made me slip off my chair. I moaned loudly, it felt incredible.

"Ah, you like that Laura, don't you?"

God, his voice was so sexy, I wanted to have sex with that voice, I wanted that voice to touch me, I wanted Mike to come to me and touch me and I wanted more, more of this.

I heard Mike type and talk to someone else. "Yeah, any more of this will probably fry her brain though, we can't keep this up." It sounded so sexy when he spoke.

Another wave of ecstasy flowed through me like liquid heat. I was writhing on the floor, touching myself.

Mike's voice was low and muffled. "Not much longer, no... that would turn her into a vegetable.... is that an order?" He typed some more, oh, I loved that noise.

"Oh, Mike, come here Mike," I purred.

"Well, well, looks like you're in for the ride of your life, Laura baby."

The wave got even more intense, embracing me. I moaned, this was the greatest I had ever felt.

"Warning. Dangerous levels of Shine. Please turn off external control to protect citizen."

That voice, I knew that voice.

The wave stopped and my mind crashed into a brick wall.

"Are you alright, Laura?"

My scalp was itching and there was a wet spot between my legs. "Gerda?"

"I'm here, shutting out the external.... bzzzt."

"What the hell?" Mike shouted over the comm line and I heard him type loudly. "That fucking AI wants to fight!"

The warm wave rose up again, making me gasp in anticipation. Oh, sexy Mike was making me feel good again.

"Now Laura, hold on tight, you're really going to like this. Not for long but, hey, it's a good way to go!" Mike whispered in my head and it felt like his voice was touching me.

"Goodbye Laura, thank you for using Virtus."

The wave was getting hotter now, making me scream in ecstasy, rolling over me, blinding me, unstoppable...

"Bzzzzzzzztttt..."

 

* * *


End file.
